


Night Music

by BIFF1



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bisexuality, Eventually sexy times happen, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Pining, Praise Kink, Self-Discovery, Time Travel, Using David Bowie to rationalize your feelings, accidental romance, complicated feelings about best friends, lyrics used as poetry, potentially ruining Crazy on You by Heart forever, some light jealousy, two dummies in love trying to figure it out, vague notions of polyamory, vaguely regency, valley boys in fancy clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26220451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIFF1/pseuds/BIFF1
Summary: Bill and Ted go back in time to find a quiet spot to work on THE SONG. At the Princesses' guidance they end up in an old English manor house that is not as empty as they were lead to believe.They are mistaken for a pair of visiting American poets and have to keep up appearances while Bill and Ted come to terms with some feelings.Post Excellent, Pre Bogus.
Relationships: Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 179





	1. Stairway to Heaven

“Are you sure no ones here? It looks like a Genesis cover dude.” Ted asked as they walked down a paved pathway towards the large house. Behind them, hidden amongst some trees was the phonebooth and laid out in front of them was the kind of building that both Bill and Ted associated with stuffy accents, butlers, public access and museum induced boredom. 

“It must be dude, the Princesses said it would be.”

Ted shrugs, as always that is enough for him, it’s enough for Bill after all. They continue walking down the garden path, between towering green sculptures and miniature fields of dense colourful flowers.

“It is most tranquil.” Bill offers as they round a softly bubbling fountain. At its centre is the statue of a young man, buck naked. Bill tries not to stare at its dick as they pass.

“Yeah, the Princesses were right, we should totally be able to write The Song here. It’s very…” Ted struggled to find the right word and in the end, just interlocked his fingers. Bill nodded. He was right, it would be the perfect place to bring unity to the world and whatnot.

Bird song lilted in from flowering trees, the air smelt of damp grass and copper, the sun was low in the sky, a golden hue to the light as it stretched across the park that was the houses yard, it reflected gold back at them from the house. Bill and Ted looked at each other smiling, a sweet air guitar solo was shared.

The sweet guitar solo was interrupted by a most egregious sound. Dogs barking.

A cacophony reached them, dogs barking, people laughing and yelling.

The dogs, large sleek black shadows of teeth and death burst through a thick hedge and Bill turned tail and ran, grabbing a handful of Ted’s sleeve as he went.

The path is crunching beneath his sneakers, Ted is at his back his hands and knees coming in and out of view out of the corner of his eye, the idyllic view crashing around his ears. Heart pounding in his ears he is seriously rethinking his fondness for dogs. Maybe he’s been a cat person all this time after all.

There’s a tug on his sleeve and he’s dragged off course by Ted.

“Ted no!”

“There’s no other way. Dogs hate water!” Ted yells and pulls them both up into the fountain and halfway up the naked statue.

“Dude that’s cats!” He yells back but he’s already sopping wet and trying to get a grip on marble arms and heft himself up onto the naked dudes totally slamming body. 

Even though dogs don’t normally have an issue with water they both stay on the ground barking up at them, pacing unhappily around the base of the fountain.

“Brutus, Harold, heel!” A man’s voice cuts through the barking and the dogs stop instantly and run back up the path to the man. Bill watches as the dog owner and his friends walk closer. Maybe they could make a break for it now? Get to the phonebooth now that they had gained that head start on the dogs again. The man was elegant and sharp and did look rather a lot like those dudes on PBS, straight back and flopping dark hair. He actually looked a lot like the statue they were both still clinging to. Bill looked down and noticed his foothold was a dick and with a yelp slipped off the statue and into the shallow water.

“Bill!” Ted’s voice was loud and frantic and a pair of hands were quickly pulling him up to sitting position in the water.

“I’m alright Ted.”

“Oh dear, what have we got here? Celeste do these belong to you?” The man is sitting on the edge of the fountain, his eyes dark and boring into Bill with a strange mix of hunger and boredom. Bill can’t help but gulp, he doesn’t know why he’s nervous, why that look has the hair on the back of his neck sticking up.

A woman in an intricately laced and complicated bright blue number separates herself from the gaggle of people. She has a glass in one hand and a fancy scrap of fabric trailing along behind her in the other. She has no care for the fact that she’s getting it dirty. It looks like none of them care much about anything but a good time.

“Oh, they might be.” Celeste hums leaning in to get a better view of them. She’s drunk but her smile is sweet and easy, “Yes. Yes, I believe they must be. Although they do look like your type Kenneth.” There is something heavy in her words as she turns to the man. The man just hums.

“Well, either way, let us get you out of the water feature shall we.” Kenneth holds out a hand, both Bill and Ted ignore it, scrambling over the edge of the fountain to drip on the pathway.

“Thanks, dude, that was most un-triumphant.” Ted smiles and the entire group seems to freeze at that before looking amongst themselves whispering, American

Celeste smiles and claps her hands, spilling her drink onto the path, “Oh yes! The American poets! Lovely! Lovely!” Excitement has been injected into the small group and they chatter as they get closer and closer to Bill and Ted.

“Poets?” Ted tilts his head and wet hair flops over his face giving him the look of a lovable curious dog.

“Yeah! Totally!” Bill steps forward. He doesn’t have a plan really, he doesn’t usually have more than an outline, but if they can play along enough to get them off their backs they can sneak off back to the phonebooth and try again. Somewhere actually empty, where they can be alone and write the song, maybe some time prehistoric. “Poets, I am Bill S. Preston Esquire, and this is my most esteemed colleague and companion.”

“Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.” Ted supplies with a wave. 

“Oh, lovely. Please grace us with a recitation.” Kenneth stands and smiles at them, he has a sneaky look to him, like he expects them to not be able to do it.

“Ted?”

Ted clears his throat and with a relaxed posture he puts a hand to his heart and with the other, he reaches out as if he can pluck something out from the very air.

“There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitter is gold.” Ted starts and Bill can’t help but turn to watch as Ted pulls Zeppelin lyrics out of the air, “and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven.”

Bill finds himself mouthing along with the track. It’s a killer track after all. That solo is most excellent.

“If the stores are all closed, with a word she can get what she came for.” Ted smiles brightly at Bill, feeling especially proud of himself, it’s lovely and Bill can’t help but help him finish, “Oh, oh, oh, oh and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven.”

There is a round of clapping, the group satisfied that they must indeed be American poets.

“What a lovely recitation.” Kenneth offers, “Now let us go back to the house and get you both out of those wet things.” The smile he offers them is hungry and it makes Bill’s stomach tighten. The man presses a hand into the small of his back as he leads them back up the path.

He turns to Ted who looks most concerned. Bill reaches out and grabs a handful of Ted’s sleeve, heavy, cold, wet, but still Ted, still a comfort. He’s not sure how to convey that they will be okay, so he just offers a smile. Ted smiles back put it’s a little dampened.

When they reach the house the men and women separate and Bill and Ted are dragged through a lush house and upstairs, everything looks warm and soft, velvet and those fancy rugs that you hang on the wall, there are paintings everywhere, shining frames around dark cloudy landscapes.

The inside of the house feels like a Genesis song sounds. Bill and Ted and ushered into a bedroom, the men laze about while a servant is pulling clothes out of a large cabinet and before he can object another is stripping them both down.

“What intriguing garments they favour in the colonies.” One of the men offers picking up Ted’s discarded jeans.

“Hey!” He’s thankful when he’s having the clothes pulled onto him, even though they are itchy and tight and way too close to his neck.

Before he even has time to think about what’s happened he’s standing in front of a large set of mirrors staring at himself and Ted’s new threads.

“Dude, we look like those rich dudes on that show Missy likes.”

Ted nods pulling at Bill’s outfit and Bill can’t help but do the same to Ted. They do however look very handsome if he has to say so himself.

“You both look very handsome.” 

Apparently he didn’t have to say it himself. Kenneth is giving them a rather intense look over. Bill would have some disparaging things to say but they get caught in his throat when he sees himself in the mirror looking at Ted in a very similar way.

“Let us join the ladies downstairs, they will be excited to see you. Perhaps we can have another recitation before the night is through.”

“Yeah sure dude,” Ted leans down to Bill, “It’s your turn next though man, I can’t remember anymore Stairway.”

“Sure thing man, and once they’re all asleep we can sneak back out to the phonebooth and try again?”

“A most righteous plan.”


	2. While my guitar gently weeps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill sees something and it makes him completely forget that they had a plan to leave.

The room that the men led them into was cluttered, it was jam-packed with red velvet chairs, and little end tables which all had at least three fancy nicknacks. The babes were lounging on some of the chairs and couches near a huge marble fireplace drinking from little china cups. 

The room was brown and gold and vibrant red but all Bill could see was just how tight Ted’s pants were. Were his as tight?

Looking down at himself confirmed that yes the pants were most tight. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much for the entire room to see the exact shape of his johnson. Which was most discomforting. He tugged at his high collar and ran a hand through his still-damp hair.

“I feel like a dressed up wet rat.” He complained, intending for the rough whisper to be only heard by Ted.

“Do not fear, you look divine.” Kenneth told him with a pat on the shoulder and went to join Celeste on the couch, “Doesn’t he look like that wonderful statuary we saw in Greece last year dear sister.”

Celeste with wide eyes smiled brightly and nodded, “Oh indeed.”

Bill didn’t like the way his face felt warm at the attention. It seemed so misguided anyway when Ted was walking through the room with his own very tight pants and high collar, and dark waistcoat.

“Do you not agree Mr. Logan?” One of the ladies smiled and set a teacup down. Bill didn’t think there was actually tea in it. They all seemed just a little drunk. Less so then they had outside, but still.

“Wha?” Ted turns from where he had been looking at the piano jammed into the corner of the room. Ted looks at him and smiled brightly, “You look most excellent my friend.” Ted agrees and gives him a thumbs up.

Bill doesn’t like the way his stomach lurches and tries to find something in the room he can focus on. What he finds is a skinny looking guitar sitting sad and alone in the corner.

“Oh, dude! A guitar, nice!” He rushes over to it and the party watch with an amused air as he picks it up.

“Do you play Mr. Preston?”

“He sure does. He’s great!” Ted offers up happily, smile on his face as he pushes his thick hair back away from his face. It just flops back forward as it always does.

“Thanks, dude.” Bill takes the compliment happily, he’ll devour any kind word Ted says. They are so often talking about how they need to get better that anything that is positive is treasured. 

“You must play for us then, perhaps with another recitation.” Kenneth looks kind of smug like he expects them to flounder and expose themselves as fakes.

“Ted?”

Ted taps out a couple of notes on the piano distracted. Bill shrugs and takes the guitar to sit down on a velvet stool near Ted and piano. He’s been practising one song over and over for the last little while. It’s Joanna’s favourite song.

Bill looks at the guitar, it doesn’t look anything like his guitar but it should be okay.

He starts picking out a soft and careful melody. Ted’s focus snaps to him, as does the rest of the room. He wishes this was an electric, but judging by the candles he’s not sure that’s an option here.

“I look at you all,” Ted sings softly, “see the love there that’s sleeping. While my guitar gently weeps.” There’s a deep emotion that just spills out of Ted as he stands beside him. Bill feels cold and warm all at once as Ted continues along to the melody of Bill’s guitar.

It’s a very sweet sound, a very sad sound. And when he looks up at the group gathered he can see that they feel it too. If he had known how great Ted sounded singing he’d get him to sing along while he practised. Something about this feels very private, and he hates it a little that all these strangers can see.

“-Still my guitar gently weeps.” Ted moves around to sit with the group. His eyes bore into him, hot and cold, comfortable and itchy all at once. Bill does his best to do the small solo justice, to do Ted’s singing justice. It’s hard to do on the strange little guitar but he manages. He doesn’t think it’s anything all that great but Ted’s face tells a different story.

Briefly, in this room in the past, in these awful clothes, he can maybe believe all the things Rufus had said. Maybe he could make the world a better place with his music. 

He stops playing, laying the instrument in his lap and looks up at the group again. Ted’s smile is warm.

“Most excellent.”

“Oh, indeed that was lovely.”

Bill and Ted don’t get much of a break until long after the sun has gone down. They’ve done a mix of reciting and playing anything they could think of, Rhiannon was a particular hit.

Bill excuses himself to try and find the bathroom. He thinks he saw one on the way back to the babes earlier. He retraces his steps, he must be going the right way because no one is stopping him. Along the second floor landing, a door is ajar. This must be the bathroom, bathrooms were only ever closed when there was someone in them. Bill has his hand on the door, fingers wrapped around it when he hears it.

It’s most definitely a moan.

He should most definitely close the door.

He doesn’t.

Bill can’t seem to help himself he peeks into the room. What if it was actually a moan of pain and someone needed help. Yeah. That.

It is not the bathroom. It’s a small library or a large study? He doesn’t know, he just knows that there are two people in there bent over the large wooden desk and there are jackets on the floor.

Jackets.

Two.

Bill looks back at the bent over form on the desk and his eyes grow wide. There isn’t much light in the room but there is enough. It’s Kenneth and one of the other men from the party, a blond whose name he’s not sure was ever given.

The two have gotten rid of their jackets, he can’t see the other man’s pants at all, pale naked legs wrapped around the other, but Kenneth’s pants are slung low and his ass would be fully out and visible if his shirt wasn’t so long.

Kenneth is leaning over the blond, an arm on the desk obscuring the other man’s face, his sleeve has been rolled up, skin on the hardwood, the other man’s hand curled around it. Bill can’t see what he’s doing with the other hand but he can guess, they move in an obvious rhythm, pushing the blond up the desk, pulled towards him, back up the desk, over and over.

The moan he had heard hadn’t been Kenneth’s because after a particularly strong push up the desk by their bodies Kenneth lets out a long low moan. His dark hair is hanging loose and all Bill can see is a blond and brunette man engaging in an activity that is most definitely sex.

It’s hard to swallow and hard to breath and to his utter horror that’s not all that’s hard. He rushes away from the door and trips his way into a small table but no one follows him, no one yells after him and he opens another door and quickly closes himself inside.

This one is the bathroom. It’s dark but it’s got that telltale coolness that always seems to live in bathrooms.

“It’s okay, you’re okay.” It’s not even like it’s the first time he’s ever seen something like that. He has a roommate after all and they share a bedroom. Sure they try really hard to give each other space but accidents happen. But that was just one guy. This was two. 

Bill moves to the sink and splashes some water on his face in the dark. He’s trying to think of things that don’t sound like moaning or look like thrusting, or Ted’s hair flopping over his face.

What.

Bill looks up at himself in the mirror, darkened into that fuzzy grey-blue light of the nighttime. 

Joanna.

Think about Joanna.

No.

Don’t think about her either.

Bill tries to go over chords in his head, where his fingers are supposed to go, how certain chords sound.

It takes too long to calm down his heart and for his pants, tight as they are, to become… less tight.

“That was most heinous.” He whispers to himself but he’s not sure he really believes it.

Stealing himself he leaves the bathroom, and with his eyes very much everywhere but the still ajar door, he heads back to the party.

The party is most assuredly winding down when he returns, everyone has a far more relaxed posture, sinking into the couches and chairs. Ted is standing in front of the marble fireplace with a bright smile, his hands up like he’s playing cards.

“And then Bill says he’s got an Ace and the dudes were most unhappy. Billy was cheating!”

A few of the ladies make a gasp as if cheating at cards was a high crime. It’s England, maybe it is.

“And so then one of them kicks the table-” Ted mimes kicking the table away and has his hands up as twin guns, “You cheat. They yell and everyone starts fighting and Bill and I are in the middle of everything, bullets and glasses and chairs flying this way and that!”

“Oh my goodness what did you do?”

“Bill and I take our new friend Billy and run out of there, we run down the street with the whole bar, maybe the whole town chasing us and we get in our… our car… carriage and drive so far away we might as well have been in ancient Greece.” Ted finishes and the group claps happily.

Bill has trouble meeting Ted’s eyes, his eyes stuck on his neck. He feels like he’s barely hanging on. He’s never been so thankful for a party to be over before.

“Alright Celeste, it seems like a good time to retire.” Kenneth says from the doorway behind Bill. Bill turns quickly a blush rushing into his face. Kenneth is leaning lazily against the door frame, his jacket is back on but his collar isn’t buttoned back up all the way.

“Oh alright brother.” She rises gracefully up from her seat and ushers them all towards the door. 

“I’ve had a couple of rooms made up for our surprise guests.” He smiles brightly turning to lead the group up the stairs, “Bill your room is next to mine.”

“Uh… thanks.” Is all that Bill is able to make come out of his mouth. The man is glancing at him as if he’s something to devour, and it makes Bill worry that he knows.

“Bill?” Ted whispers coming up close beside him and all he can do is shake his head. He can’t tell Ted. He can’t tell him what he saw, or how he felt, or what he thinks.

There isn’t a lot that stands between Bill and his best friend but there is a line and that line is definitely being toed at.

“Ted this is your room.” Kenneth opens the door and Ted looks confused.

“So we aren’t sharing?”

A burst of chatter goes up in the group around them but nothing is said more than, “No, we have plenty of rooms. No sharing required. Bill will be in the next hallway with myself, Edith and the good left-tenant.” 

“Oh. Okay.” He smiles but it’s not as easy as it should be. Bill feels Ted’s hand graze his arm before he’s ushered into his own room and the group slowly separates.

The room Bill is given is between Kenneth and the left-tenant, whatever that is, all he knows is that the left-tenant is most definitely the guy from the study. Which makes him feel like he’s been dumped into the middle of something… something intimate. The room itself is a lot like the Princesses room, it’s got a large bed with curtains hanging down in green velvet, there is a small fire in the fireplace that sends a golden glow onto some things and makes deep dark shadows. He lets out a sigh of relief when he sees his jeans hanging over a chair.

He sits on the edge of the bed he knows there’s something he should be doing, somewhere he should be going but his head feels like someone whipping up a smoothie, it’s all over the place, melting and melding, he can only pull out a few separate thoughts and they are not ones he really wants.

The clear images in his head make his stomach lurch and tighten, those stupid tight pants all the more uncomfortable with the uncomfortable thoughts. Because he isn’t picturing Kenneth and the left tenant, it’s him on that desk and Joanna’s soft red blonde hair is nowhere to be found. Just dark dark hair and bright smiles and those dark eyes turned hungry.

Bill’s fingers find themselves tangled in his hair, curved over himself because this is not right. He is into Babes… he is. He totally thinks Joanna is just the best, she’s super nice and totally cool, and getting great at the drums, plus she’s got a slamming bod.

But like, Ted is also all those things, well except the drums, he’s not really a drummer.

Which was confusing because how could he like both of them. The had some seriously different parts. But maybe the parts weren’t that different after all? Because he was pretty sure Kenneth had been fingering the Left-tenant but wasn’t that a thing for girls?

Bill had no idea but thinking about it was creating a problem in his pants. He kicked off the pants, throwing the offending jacket and shirt and weird little scarf thing into a pile on the floor with them. He doesn't bother with the blankets or sheets, it’s hot in the room with the fire going.

He lays there, in the fancy bed, staring up at the dark canopy and tries not to think. It’s not usually this difficult to shut his brain off, he tries tapping out a rhythm on his stomach 

There is a sound from the hall, a masculine laugh cut short as someone knocks into something in the hall, Bill listens carefully, there are two voices, whispers, and the sound of a door closing. Bill feels suddenly cold, a little sick because he knows what’s happening, he knows that in the next room there are two men probably locked in a hug, maybe kissing, about to do… other things…

Things he had never really be curious about before but was finding himself wondering about now…

Did that feel good? 

It had certainly sounded like it…

He’s afraid but his hands move down his body anyway, maybe he’ll try just a little bit, just to know for sure that he wasn’t…

With eyes closed, lip bitten, breath held, his hands move past his interested and familiar appendage. His finger is blunt and dry and uncomfortable, and he thinks back on smut he’s read, it’s always wet, always. Taking a hand out of his underwear but without opening his eyes he sucks a finger into his mouth. At least there isn’t a taste or anything. He’s not sure they have invented toothpaste yet. 

The sensation is not all that different than the first time, it’s still strange and scary and foreign but there’s a strange sense of determination in his body, in the centre of him something is warm and molten, there is something most excellent hiding underneath the fear and he focuses on that as he presses in.

It doesn’t feel… bad, it’s strange and he must be doing something wrong because it had certainly sounded like this was a good time. His bracelets are rubbing against his skin and he imagines the match, a different wrist against his skin, a different hand, and there’s maybe something heavy and light in his chest at the same time because it feels better now. Maybe the secret was to move around a bunch.

“Oh fuck-” The words are ripped out of his throat, he doesn’t know what he’s done, but it’s like there is some hidden sex dial hidden inside of him and he’s cranked it up to eleven by accident. It isn’t an accident the second time.

Maybe there was something to this after all because he felt most triumphant.


	3. Eruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ted watches and thinks and feels too much.

The room they have shoved Ted into was nice if you like museums. It was dark with the light coming from a few candles and the small fire in the fireplace. The curtains, both on the window and the bed, were the colour of bruises, almost shinny, glowy, purple. Iridescent. Like the gasoline rainbows in puddles. There were paintings of ships in storms on all the walls and it makes his stomach churn.

He needs out of here. There is something about this place that is making Bill uncomfortable and that just will not do. Not to mention all these clothes are most heinous. Sure they look good on Bill but Bill’s got that classical handsome thing going for him, Ted just feels like a kid playing dress-up. The mirror on the dresser agrees.

He sticks his tongue out at his reflection and picks up a candlestick from a table and leaves the room. 

The hallway is dark, that grey-blue night time film over everything, Ted hides the flame with his hand, the warmth seeping into his hand as he walks through the darkness in a pool of golden light. Dozens of painted eyes follow him into the next hallway. Behind one of those doors is his best friend, he’s just not sure which one it is.

Maybe he should have waited for Bill to come get him? Bill knew where he was… But something is unsettled in Ted, it feels like something is pulling him, pushing him maybe into action.

He moves closer to the doors, ears straining to hear something that will tell him which door to try. Behind the first one, he can hear snoring and rules that one out. Bill doesn’t snore, he would know, they’ve been sharing a bedroom since they graduated.

The next room can’t be right either. There’s a set of voices, two dudes in there laughing and whispering. One of the voices sounds like their host. 

Ted likes most people but there is something about Kenneth that sits wrong in him. The very idea of him makes his skin feel wrong, it’s something about the way he looks at Bill, the way he moves to touch him. Like dude, that’s my best friend, not yours.

The next room must be Bill. With his ear pressed to the door he can hear something, shuffling. It’s Bill, most definitely. 

His free hand is on the doorknob, turning it slowly, carefully, he doesn’t want to alert anyone else to the fact that they are leaving. This bedroom is just as big and fancy as his was, but what his eyes catch on it the pile of clothes sitting in the glow of the firelight. 

Oh man, he should have thought about changing.

But when his eyes travel upwards he can see Bill’s jeans draped across a chair beside the bed.

“Fuck-” Bill whispers and Ted’s eyes snap to his friend. Bill is spread out on the bed, half-obscured by hanging green velvet, but it’s enough to tell that he’s not cursing because he’s hurt.

Ted has never seen Bill naked, they have been very careful about shower related sitcom mishaps, but he can’t say that now. It’s a wide expanse of pale creamy skin, arched and it makes him feel like he has to swallow, like he should look away. But he can’t, not when the fire is making Bill’s body look like a painting, golden and godlike.

It takes Ted a long moment of looking at his friend before he realizes he’s not doing what he thought he was. His hands aren’t on his dick at all. His legs twist and fall open over and over around his wrists. If Ted moves just a little to the left he’ll be able to see. He feels frozen inside and volcanic hot on the edges like a microwave burrito. He’s not sure if his feet actually lift but he ends up with a full view, eyes wide.

He didn’t think that guys liked that, but Bill certainly is. His breath is loud but his moans are soft, hidden in a fancy pillow, and Ted recognizes the sounds. 

Sure he hasn’t seen Bill naked or anything, but they do share a bedroom, he’s seen, not watched he swears, just seen, Bill twisting in his own bed, hand moving under the blankets, his whole body close enough to Ted that if he just reached out he could feel the sweat gathering on his skin. 

But this isn’t home, this isn’t the same, this is straight-up watching his best friend do sex stuff to himself. His breath is picking up and he’s afraid it’s too loud, that he’ll get caught because he’s standing there in the doorway with dark eyes eating up the view and his already tight pants getting tighter and tighter which is most concerning.

Bill’s legs fall open again, and the light from the firelight him up, liquid gold, like some saint or god, wet fingers shine and disappear the only mar on his skin the shadows of lines across his wrist. A friendship bracelet that’s match is resting on his own wrist, something made with Ted’s own hands, his fingers, twisting and pushing the threads together.

Bill doesn’t moan out anyone’s name like in porn, it’s not a declaration of love, or how good it feels, or how big it is, it’s just that same low sound cut off in the middle like his brain has forgotten how sounds work, then that low low sound, a satisfied sigh that he’s heard in the safety of their home. 

Bill always lays still for a moment before turning over and when he does Ted knows he’ll end up looking right at him. 

Quick, he steps back out into the hall, not at all as quiet as he should be, closes the door tightly behind him and holds his breath. There’s a noise behind him, quick movements and Ted’s head is filled with a siren.

Get out! Hide!

Blowing out the candle Ted looks around the hall for something, anything, to hide in or behind. Across the hall is hanging a large fancy rug. He rushes behind it and finds a little hiding place. Just big enough for himself and his useless candlestick.

He’s holding his breath, his entire body tensed as he hears the door across the hall open, Bill. He wants to see him, what he looks like now, how his hair is sitting, if his cheeks are red, mouth wet, is he wrapped in a blanket, did he throw on his pants and is standing there in this old English manner in open acid-washed jeans. Ted closes his eyes tightly and waits for the door to close again, and then waits even longer.

When it’s been quiet in the hall for a while he steps out from his hiding place and is standing alone in the dark hallway afraid of how much he wants to reach out for that doorknob. He needs to do what he always does when his body feels like it’s not his own, he needs music.

He makes his way back down to the empty and darkened music room and sits down at the piano. He looks hard at the guitar put away in its spot in the corner again, but that feels like Bill’s and he’s scared to touch it now, worried it will somehow still be warm from his touch.

With the unlit candlestick on the piano, he feels like that phantom of the opera that Iron Maiden was talking about. Fingers hover above the keys trying to remember anything that Elizabeth had taught him but that was another thing altogether.

Elizabeth. 

How did he feel about her, how did he feel about her now that he had watched his best friend like that? On purpose, not by accident like he had in their bedroom at night a couple feet away. Was he allowed to like her still when he felt those same weird hot, cold, hungry feelings for Bill as well?

His fingers drop onto the keys and heavy deep notes fill the air. It sounds humid somehow, like the heat between two bodies, a heat he’s mostly felt only with Bill.

The notes pour out of him, heavy and nonsensical, melodic but meaningless, meaningless because if he stares into the dark corners of the room and keeps his mind blank maybe he can somehow unsee Bill, golden and godlike, undone and perfect.

He’s playing slowly letting each deep note breathe with him, calming down his racing heart and laboured breathing. If he closes his eyes he can hear Bill’s breathing again.

“Ted, my most excellent friend… you sound like a ghost.” Bill’s voice makes his fingers stumble and he turns to see Bill, clothed in nothing more than his jeans, no shirt, not socks.

“Bill… are you okay?”

“Are you?”

Ted has never lied to Bill in his life and he refuses to now so instead of answering he gets up from the piano, “Should we stay for breakfast?” He wants to leave but the very idea of jamming so close together in the phonebooth right now makes him feel like he’s on the edge of some great pit.

Bill shrugs, “Sure.” He isn’t bathed in golden light anymore but something about him still seems to glow in the dark. They walk back up the stairs in silence Bill in next to nothing Ted in his full fancy getup. Ted feels like a black hole next to him. Has he always felt like that? He can’t remember.

Ted follows him and doesn’t notice that he’s in Bill’s hallway until they are frozen by the sounds of Kenneth and his ‘companion’ saying their goodbyes.

Panicking Ted grabs Bill by the arm and pulls him behind the rug, into the small hiding place. Ted can’t stand the idea of Kenneth seeing Bill like this, loose and undressed.

“Dude?” Bill whispers.

There isn’t enough space in this hiding place for both of them, not really, so they are pressed against each other, bare chest to wool jacket. Bill’s hands are on Ted’s chest, fingers that had been so recently somewhere interesting and intimate and desirable were splayed across the cotton and wool of his outfit. If Ted shifted his hips, and he was definitely not going to do that, but if he did he was sure he’d be able to feel the open fly of Bill’s jeans.

He wasn’t sure how he was still breathing, it was way too warm and the spaces between them seemed to shrink. Ted has always been just a little bit taller than Bill, it has always been his job to reach things and if he looks dead ahead all he can see is golden curls.

“Ted…” Bill’s whisper makes him look down and Bill’s eyes are wandering his face, darting between eyes, and ear, and mouth. 

Mouth.

Wasn’t that the sign? The big KISS ME sign? He was pretty sure he had read something, or watched something, or heard something, that someone when they were close and they looked at your mouth it was like a flashing neon sign that you were supposed to kiss them?

Is that what Bill wanted?

Is that what he wanted?

He finds himself looking at Bill’s mouth, soft and damp and pale, open just a little a dark velvet looking shadow that looked inviting.

“I’m in my room now boys, you can come out of your hiding place.” Kenneth’s voice calls out with a laugh before the sound of a door snaps closed.

Bill pushes off of Ted, his hands hot and heavy, and pushes out of the hiding place. Ted closes his eyes hard and breathes out roughly expelling whatever was building up inside of him and following him out.

The hallway is just as dark as before but Bill is light up by the moonlight coming in through the window now. Ted knows that anything he was trying to expel has returned because he feels heavy in his chest again, that same hot and cold feeling taking over because Bill is a lot of things but he had never really thought about how beautiful, was one of them.

“Night Ted.” 

“Night Bill.”

Bill watches his best friend close the door behind him and worries that he’s made a mess of things. What Bill does in his own bed is his own business… no matter how it makes Ted feel.


	4. 25 or 6 to 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ted is trying to make sense of his feelings. It doesn't go all that well.

“Waiting for the break of day,” Ted takes a breath trying to remember the words, “Searching for something to say…” 

He’s standing in the back garden, up the hill from the hedge maze he and Bill had been chased through by the dogs, if he turned a little to face the garden like everyone else he’d be able to see the naked dude fountain. The day has been a long one, especially since he hadn’t really managed to sleep after he had separated from Bill last night.

Every time he had managed to close his eyes he saw Bill, and while that wasn’t exactly uncommon there was something different this time and he couldn’t pretend there wasn’t.

“Flashing lights against the sky, giving up, I close my eyes.” Ted closes his eyes tightly, he wishes he was at home, wishes he was far away from this place and these people, wishes he could take a time machine back before they had left and tell them not to go. Tell them something was wrong here, that it would ruin everything.

How could they write the song that would bring harmony to the world when he couldn’t even find it within himself?

“Sitting cross leg on the floor, 25 or 6 to 4.”

The group claps and beckons him back to sitting around the low table with them. There is definitely not enough space next to Bill but he sits there anyway. They are dressed all fancy again, tight pants and all, and Ted can feel the heat of his friend seeping into him where their legs are touching.

He takes his little plate of tiny snacks off the table and shoves a tiny sandwich into his mouth. He doesn’t want to have to field any questions about the meaning of the lyrics of 25 or 6 to 4, he is tired of making up stuff, he’s been doing it all day.

He hasn’t had a moment alone with Bill all day, it’s almost as if they know that they want to leave. That he wants to run straight ahead as fast as he can and pull Bill into the phonebooth and never have to think about what Bill does at night, or how he does it, or if they should do it together.

Whoa.

Where did that come from?

He snuck a look at Bill. Bill was talking animatedly about music and the guitar, and the totally triumphant dessert they had had. His eyes were bright even as the sun was sinking, golden curls bouncing as he talked and laughed and something hurt inside of Ted that he couldn’t remember feeling before.

He loved it when Bill laughed and smiled so why did it feel like he was dieing?

He was gnawing on his lip trying to sort his thoughts when a delicate hand rested on his knee.

Celeste was smiling softly at him a small leather book in the other hand. She had a much simpler dress on today, soft pink and flowy, she looked just as dangerous as she had the night before, maybe more so now.

“Would you do another recitation, Mr. Logan?”

“Don’t you want to hear Bill?”

“Do you want to hear Bill?”

Ted shrugs, “Course.”

“Well then,” Celeste turned ever so slightly and cleared her throat once, the party went silent and turned to her, “Mr. Preston? If you would do me the honour of a recitation of my favourite piece? I have it marked.” She holds out the book and with a shrug Bill takes it.

Bill was always better at reading from books than Ted was, sometimes the words seemed to jump around when he hadn’t seen them before and he didn’t want to blow their cover.

Plus he really would rather listen to Bill. Ted had been pulling most of the lyrical weight today.

Bill opens the book to the marked page and takes a breath, forehead scrunching in concentration as he runs over the words quickly in silence.

“Whoever you are holding me now in hand,” Bill starts the words slow but each hitting some unseen target in each of the party, they are all silent, watching Bill as if he was the only thing worth the time.

He is.

He always is.

“Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,” The words rush out of him percussive like beats against Joanna’s drumset, “ I am not what you supposed, but far different.”

A breath.

Bill looks up from the page, “Who is he that would become my follower?” He turns to Ted, “Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?”

Bill holds his gaze for centuries, eyes burning deep through him, to that sick and heavy core, to the place were he is hoarding all that Bill will give him. 

He looks away and continues reading the poem but Ted can’t hear anything else.

Who would think themselves worthy of Bill’s love.

Ted swallows hard.

He would.

Who else in all of time and space but himself.

“Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you-”

Ted needs air, he needs space, all the places he touches Bill, all the inches he had taken comfort in are burning. He can’t move, not without destroying the party. Torn between running away and staying at his best friend’s side forever…

The poem is long but Bill has always been good at public speaking, always good at pulling a crowd in with the rhythm of his voice, the poem moves through his body like an ocean. He’s glad it’s over because Bill hands the book back to Celeste with that bright as sunshine smile.

“A turn about the garden before sunset?” One of the ladies suggests and with a round of agreements the entire party, Bill and Ted included follow Celeste and one of her lady friends down into the sprawling gardens.

Ted sticks close to Bill, eyeing the way that Kenneth keeps looking their way, looking at them like he’s in on their secret. 

If they have a secret he doesn’t want Kenneth to know anything about it. Kenneth looks at Bill like he wants to take and Ted finds his fingers circling Bill’s wrist.

“What’s up Ted?”

“I don’t like how he looks at you…” Ted whispers, lips brushing against his hair.

“I think he’s looking at you, Ted.”

Ted shakes his head, “No way dude.”

They walk in silence behind the group as they chat and laugh happily surrounded by large pink flowers, Bill doesn’t shake off his grip but he’s staring at the flowers.

The sunsets into the woods beyond the manicured lawns and gardens and the group wandered back towards the house with its puddles of golden light. Ted can’t seem to get himself to follow and it keeps Bill with him in the darkened garden.

The party is too wrapped up in whatever they are talking about now to notice they are missing two.

“Are you okay?” Bill asks but there is something about his eyes, they don’t really meet his, they wander around and Ted can’t help but feel stupid in his rich person getup. He must look weird and Bill is trying to not make him feel bad.

“I don’t like it here.” Is all he can manage to get out, words are caught in his throat. 

“Okay, we’ll leave tonight.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The stars are coming out all around Bill, the sky beautiful, blue and green and starry. It’s like nothing they can see in San Dimas, there are too many lights, too many flashing lights dancing across the sky.

If it was just the two of them maybe this really would be the tranquil, harmonious place it had seemed yesterday. Maybe if they had just stayed together last night he wouldn’t have seen, he wouldn’t have watched, he wouldn’t feel this way, he wouldn’t be staring at Bill’s mouth wondering what it feels like if it tastes like that purple jam if it’s sweet and warm and soft.

“Promise.” Bill says again like he needs to make himself remember like he’s promising himself as well. He wraps his fingers around Ted’s on his wrist and with a quick squeeze he turns and he lets his fingers slide away from the soft warm skin.

Ted stays in the garden, surrounded by heavy flowers, it smells like a greenhouse, wet and green and earthy. Maybe if he stays still no one will notice him and he can stay here and wait for their escape. Bill enters the light pooling from the open doors of the house and disappears and he doesn’t know why but it twists something in his chest. It is most un-triumphant.


	5. Crazy on You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill and Ted finally come to terms with their feelings. This is it kiddos the sexy times have arrived!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this took so long. This chapter almost doubles the word count. If you're looking for some music for this chapter I would suggest my writing playlist with an emphasis on Crazy on You.
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6qTh4caStGi01HRih4Ir9I?si=pIs3nhWdTO2V-kbxAZd6VA

Ted hadn’t followed Bill into the house. It felt weird not having him follow, not having him just a few steps away, but everything felt weird now anyway.

After all, would anything really be the same again after full-on masturbating while thinking about him? Cause that’s what happened wasn’t it. Last night, he had… put his fingers… inside… and thought not of some abstract concept or even of Joanna but of Ted. Of Ted’s fingers, and mouth, and the idea of a cock he hadn’t actually seen but had strong ideas about.

Which was definitely gay.

Which he was definitely not.

Because he liked babes, Joanna and Missy both very good examples of him finding the opposite sex incredibly excellent.

But when he thought about perfection, it was so often shaped like Ted.

Maybe he was allowed to like both? He hadn’t really heard of that before, TV shows seemed to be pretty focused on one or the other, and music… well…

Bowie.

Bowie definitely liked dudes AND babes, and he was a rock star.

Bill decided that because he was a rock star, destined to be maybe the most important rock star in all of history (aside from Ted), that it was okay if he liked Joanna AND Ted. Rock stars were allowed all kinds of things and Bill decided that Ted would be what he was allowed. 

He just hoped that Ted wanted Bill to be what he was allowed too.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Bill looks up and finds that he isn’t in the safety of his tiny apartment, he isn’t safe at all, he’s in the middle of a party of fancy old British dudes, pretending to be a poet so they don’t end up on another chopping block. They don’t have very good luck in England. He had been sitting alone on one of the small couches all rich red velvet and smelling of dust. He’s joined now, not by anyone he wants to be joined by but by Celeste.

It could have been worse, it could have been her brother, Kenneth, who touched way too much for a fancy British dude.

“Sorry, did you want another poem or something, that last one was most righteous.” He does his best to smile, large and carefree, but it doesn’t really work. Celeste is smiling at him, tight-lipped, like she knows so much more than him, she probably does, but at least he knows how microwaves work… it was magnets, right?

“Oh no, do not worry about that right now Mr. Preston. You looked so deep in thought I was curious as to what could captivate you so.”

“Oh… I was just thinking about Ted-”

“Ah, say no more Mr. Preston.” Her smile reminds him of a shark.

“It’s not like that-”

“Oh? Is it not?” She puts her hands on his own, patting him in what is definitely a condescending manner, “Well that will work out just lovely for my dear brother then.”

“What?”

“Oh, I do believe he has slipped away into the garden to talk with Mr. Logan about…” She presses dainty fingers to her mouth as if she is suddenly shy. She should be an actress, because he almost believes her, “He means to ask permission to woo you.”

“What!?” Bill’s sure his eyes must be wide, mouth open in shock, cheeks bright red, with his colouring he can’t hide anything.

He doesn’t ask why Kenneth thinks he needs to ask Ted, he doesn’t even think about it, he’s just moving, rushing out the large doors to the garden, he barely hears the sweet laughter he leaves in his wake.

The night air has grown cold in the short amount of time he’d been inside, but maybe it was the fireplace and the embarrassed blood pounding through his veins making his skin so much warmer than the air.

At first, it was hard to see anything, the light from inside the house making the unlit gardens so much darker than they had seemed when they had been out just moments ago watching the stars come out. Blinking into existence around Ted like a halo.

Ah, there they were. Ted and Kenneth were standing with their backs to the house, looking out into the garden, towards the maze of hedges, the fountain and the phonebooth.

They didn’t seem to be talking about much of anything when Bill walked up behind them, careful not to startle them, to startle Ted who was so on edge Bill wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself abandoned in the past by accident.

Ted’s posture is so straight and tense it almost hurts to look at, Ted was usually so loose and fluid in his movements. Kenneth is standing too close to him his hands clasped behind his back.

“I assure you that whatever you’ve heard about me is quite false Mr. Logan.”

“What I’ve heard?”

“Oh lets not be coy Mr. Logan, I’m well aware that my reputation as a gentleman is… shall we say… tarnished.”

Bill had no idea what he meant and judging by the way Ted moved, he didn’t get it either. Kenneth continued anyway as if they all knew what he was talking about.

“I would like to assure you that William’s public virtue would of course remain intact.”

“William?”

“Mr. Preston of course, forgive my familiarity.”

Ted’s head tilts confused, “You want to… what do you want dude?”

Bill has a pretty good idea what Kenneth wants to do with his virtue but he can’t manage to make any words come out of his mouth, it’s just hanging there open useless as he watches.

“I wish to have your permission to pursue Mr. Preston. I believe he will make a most outstanding bed companion.”

Ted chokes on a cough and Bill feels like his cheeks are on actual fire they feel so hot.

“I mean, it’s not really my business who Bill… takes as a… bed companion-”

“Oh? I was under the impression that you were both very close. In the Greek style. Just last night you expected to stay in the same room.”

“Yeah… we sleep in the same room… we don’t sleep… together.”

“And you and he were hiding behind the tapestry when I was returning to my rooms…”

“Tapestry… the fancy rug… it wasn’t like that… we aren’t like that…”

Bill’s insides freeze at that. They aren’t like that, it’s not like that, we aren’t like that. Ted didn’t want it to be like that. All those mental hoops he had jumped were for nothing if Ted didn’t also want to be like Bowie if Ted didn’t want him back.

God that felt bad, like lead in his stomach, like falling and falling and falling.

“Well if that is the case there is nothing to discuss on that front. Lovely. I am most excited to court William-”

Ted looks and Kenneth and the fancy man clears his throat, “Are you quite sure you and Mr. Preston are not attached? I would of course understand if you wished to be, Mr. Preston has the visage of a Greek god, I have seen statues of the god Apollo that pale in comparison to Mr. Preston’s features. He has that lovely fire inside, which tends to translate rather nicely to the bedroom.”

While Bill was generally onboard with people thinking he’d be good in the sack, this just was not one of those times.

Ted is shaking his head, “You’re wrong dude. Bill isn’t some pretty statue, he’s so much more than a fire with the face of a god.” Ted turns to look at Kenneth more directly, like this is something he really needs to get across, “It’s up to Bill who he wants to bone, but I don’t think it should be you. You just don’t get it. Bill is good to look at sure, but…” Ted’s hands grasp at nothing, struggling to find the right thing to say.

“But?” Kenneth asks and he’s not sure if he’s trying to egg Ted on, or just remind him that he is still listening. It grates on him anyway. Ted always had these great ideas and thoughts they just took the scenic route to his mouth. You had to wait.

“Bill is like that Heart song, he’s all intricate guitar sounds, this absolutely excellent fingerpick thing,” Ted continues even though Kenneth will have no idea what that sounds like, who Heart is, and how those chicks won’t even be born for like ages, “this building building building thing, it seems so small, intimate even but it builds into this huge totally triumphant piece.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow Mr. Logan.”

Kenneth didn’t need to follow that because Bill did and it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about him. It was probably the nicest thing anyone would ever say about him period.

“If I’m not worthy, you aren’t either dude.”

“Ted-” Bill can’t help himself, he shouldn’t be listening to this but he is, he has been and the very idea that Ted thinks he isn’t worthy is just… the stupidest thing ever.

“Bill!” 

“Mr. Preston.” 

They both turn surprised to see the object of their conversation just feet away in the dark garden. They are all surrounded by flowers and starlight and Bill’s heart is breaking and mending at the same time.

Kenneth is saying something, apologizing or something, it doesn’t matter because all he’s focused on is Ted and Ted looks like he’s going to explode. Eyes wide cheeks red, he shakes his hair into his face like he’s ever been able to hide from him.

Bill watches as Ted takes a step backwards, then another, half into a rosebush before he turns and just books it into the dark garden.

“Ted! Stop!” Bill rushes after him. He’s barrelling though the garden, dodging bushes and clipping into hedges, they tear at his clothes but he can’t spare a thought to the dumb fancy clothes, Ted is up ahead somewhere and is upset. He smashes into the side of the fountain and swears, it’ll bruise for sure but he keeps going, Ted is freaking and running toward the phonebooth.

Bill stumbles to a stop in front of the phonebooth, Ted is already inside it, large eyes wet and shimmering in the near dark, they’re light up by stars but he can see Ted, he can always see Ted.

“Stop.”

Ted drops the phonebook but doesn’t look at him.

“Ted…”

He shakes his head again, violently, dark hair hiding his eyes, “Don’t Bill… I’m… just don’t…”

“Ted stop, there’s nothing wrong.”

“How can you say that? You heard me say those things… I- I saw you last night- before you came to find me- I saw you- What you were doing, everything’s wrong. I’m wrong.”

“You’re not.”

“I am… I think I’m in love with you.” Ted is talking to the grass between them, fists clenched, ready to fight but Bill can’t fight, his chest aches. 

He wants to say something back to Ted but he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t love him back, does he? Love was this big huge power ballad thing, right? All thumping drums and dramatics, and nothing about how he felt about Ted was like that. The way he felt was not big or loud, it wasn’t plugged into an amp, it was soft, it was comfortable. The way he felt about Ted was very un-rock-and-roll. The way he felt about Ted was like a fucking Leonard Cohen song, slow and low and kinda sad. But it was sad because Ted wasn’t supposed to return any of those feelings. Those thoughts he’d had last night, the same he’d had hundreds, thousands of times before that.

Fuck.

He loved Ted.

He loved Ted quietly, slowly, for years and years, it had been building up, and it was in everything when he thought about it, it was in the way they smiled at each other, the way he would take the blame for things so Captain Logan wouldn’t fly off the handle, in the way he read out English passages that Ted had trouble with even though they hadn’t been in the same class, the way he’d open doors, or carry things, or how hard and long and carefully he thought about Christmas and birthday gifts, it was in the way he always waited for Ted to finish a thought.

He loved him and he would have continued to do so, in everything they did, in every laugh and touch and smile, even if they had never come here, even if they had never been pushed like this. Even if they had stayed on track and gotten married and had kids and their rock band took off and they made the song that would unite the world, even if they didn’t do any of those things and were just two dudes that lived next to each other, the love would always be there. Even if it wasn’t showy or big or dramatic or power ballad-y.

He loved Ted, now, in the past, in the present, in the future.

“I love you too.”

“What?” Ted looks up and he’s dark eyes are searching, looking all over him looking for the lie. He’d never lied to Ted before, and he wasn’t lying now. It was true. He loved him.

“I love you, dude.”

“Like a brother?”

“Nah, man. Like I think we should kiss and all that righteous stuff.”

“Okay.” Ted reaches out nervously and Bill steps into his grasp. He’s so nervous it feels like he’s going to hurl but it’s Ted and Ted feels like a safe haven, always. He can feel Ted’s hands shaking as he holds onto him and he’s probably shaking too as he presses cold fingers to his warm neck, into his thick hair.

Ted’s breath is hot against his face as they slowly close the space between them. He doesn’t smell like slushies or doritos or any of the sweets he’s imagined before, it’s the smell of dinner and dessert and it shouldn’t be appealing except that it is because it’s coming from Ted and he wants to consume him all.

He felt like he was waiting forever as if their closeness to the phonebooth had somehow stretched time and he would never make the distance between them shorter, make it nonexistent, erase it and touch their lips together.

And then time seemed to snap back double-time and Ted’s mouth was pressed against his own, damp and scared and pressing so sweetly against his own, chaste and lovely. His fingers curled, hands balling into fists to pull Ted, keep him this close always.

Music was swelling in his chest, or his heart, his lungs, his brain, a most excellent guitar riff, a most triumphant sound and it was electric in his fingertips and his lips. The music was for Ted and he tightened his fingers and opened his mouth to give back to him.

A soft sound, low in the throat, flooded his ears as Ted took the song away and replaced it with new music, with the touch of his tongue, with his hands grabbing and squeezing his waist and the back of his neck.

Loving Ted may have been soft and light and quiet and like putting on a favourite worn-in t-shirt but kissing him was like making music.

Bill loved making music.

Mouths and tongues and hands moving urgently to the rhythm in his head, breath coming in short puffs shared between them like everything else in their lives. Something is tugging at his shirt and his mind has to swim back to the cold of the night when they pull apart.

Ted has his hands on the front of the fancy puffy shirt.

“Off. I hate it,” Ted grumbles before he seems to crash back into him fingers clawing, searching, for buttons, pressing as far into him as he can without toppling them over into the grass.

“You hate it?” He manages to ask with a mouth full of Ted’s hair as his friend buries his face into the crook of his neck, wetting the high collar.

“I- I want more of your skin- is that, is that okay?” He whispers into the fabric.

“It’s most excellent.”

They separate and Bill can see Ted’s face, flushed pink, mouth red from kissing, wonders if his is like that too, trying to focus on the buttons while Ted’s hands try to help, they just get in the way but he can’t bear to tell him to step back.

Bill gets the shirt and jacket off, letting them fall to the ground and instantly he feels cold and very very un-triumphant. He looks back at the house, can see it still light up, can see the fountain and has the overwhelming feeling that he doesn’t want this to happen here, whatever this is, whatever is going to happen, and he has a pretty good idea, or a hope maybe, but he doesn’t want to do that here, in the grass, in some rich old fancy peoples yard.

“Ted?”

“Yes, Bill?”

“I want to go home.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No, I just… I want to continue… at home. At our house.”

Ted nods and steps back to let Bill into the phonebooth, he always goes in first. Ted follows him and closes the door. A quick dial and a smack to the wall and they are rocketing away through the circuits of time.

Bill can’t help staring at Ted as they get tossed around the booth. So lovely, so completely excellent, his hair barely looks any different, but his mouth is fascinating. He’s bitting at his lips and he wonders what it would feel like to do that for him if he’d make that noise in the back of his throat again if maybe he’d make that noise he had heard in the dark of their bedroom when Bill was supposed to be asleep.

They land on the front lawn of their apartment building and tumble out with the same amount of relief as always, maybe a little more than usual. The Out of Order sign goes on the door and they move quickly up to their door. Bill has his arms crossed across his chest, very very aware that he is topless, which isn’t that new or that uncomfortable given the California air but something about it feels less like not wearing a shirt and more like naked.

Ted pulls his house keys out of seemly nowhere just as Bill realizes he’s left his in England. Something to worry about later, tomorrow, maybe never.

Ted’s hand is on Bill’s back, and it’s not the first time he’s felt it there, he had a habit of wearing short shirts and they let Ted’s hand touch often. He had gotten off more than once remembering the feel of his large hand there.

The apartment is a mess just like they had left it and he lets out a nervous breath, it feels so much more like home than that super clean fancy house with its super high ceilings and million paintings. And best of all it’s just the two of them.

The door clicks locked behind him, the chain rattles across the door but Bill can’t turn around to look. He wants to kiss Ted, wants to do more than that, but the nervousness is back and it makes his stomach feel like it’s filled with rocks and his skin is ice cold without his shirt or Ted’s hands.

“Bill?” Ted asks from behind him.

He doesn’t turn around to look at him, maybe it’ll be easier for both of them this way. He doesn’t know what to do. It always seemed so easy in pornos, they just fell into each other, they should be doing it on the floor by now.

“Yes, my most excellent- yes-” Bill closes his eyes tightly, “yes my love?”

Ted’s breath is loud at that, rushing out into his hair. He’s so much closer than he thought he was.

Ted doesn’t say whatever he was going to, maybe it’s been answered but arms are wrapped around him and Ted hides his face in the slope of his neck. Wet mouth on sensitive skin, his pulse is beating hard like a Neil Peart solo.

There is a sharp wet hot pain in his neck and a spike of heat and blood rushes south. Ted has bitten him, mouthing at his pulse and Bill’s breath is racing along with his blood. He grabs onto Ted’s arms, leaning back into him and a moan long and low and filthy just falls out of him.

It was strange. Being acted upon. Bill had been told all his life, by one person or another, tv, penthouse, fucking MTV, that as a man he would do the acting, he would be the one to do things, to make advances, to dominate and control. Those voices were in his head now telling him this was the wrong way to do this.

The buzz of Ted's breath on his skin, the heat and drag of his fingers across his bare sides told an entirely different story. That these feelings were alright, good even because they came from Ted and Ted only ever wanted him to be happy.

All he'd ever wanted was to make music with his best friend, he had never expected they would make this kind of music. Because it was definitely music. Ted's voice low and strange, this deep rumbling thing he'd never heard before, mumbling nothing into his skin, little moans and gasps as he totally destroyed Bill's neck.

"I saw you last night." Ted practically bites into the joint of his neck. Large hot hands ran across his arms, unfolding them and holding them out in front of them both, "I didn't mean to, they were hypnotic." Ted's hands hold his own, fingers pressing into the meat of his hands, splaying fingers only to run his own over them, heavy, pressing and sliding, "I wanted them to be mine." Ted tells him, the words hot puffs of air against his ear. 

Ted is pressed to his back and Bill can feel him, really feel him, not just the heat radiating from his body through the clothes but the length of him hard against the stupid tight pants he's wearing.

"I wanted them to be yours too." He forces the words out because he has to, Ted needs to hear them and he needs to say them, he feels lightheaded, his pulse a continuous drum solo, a throb and snick snick snick in his pants.

"Bill-"

"Ted?"

"I want to, can I, can they be my hands? Can we do that?"

He moans at the idea, a weedy little whine of a thing he isn't proud of, he nods and twists a hand to wrap fingers around Ted's and move them finally into the bedroom. He decides on Ted's bed, it's closest to the door and it smells like him, not like English roses, but that cologne he got for his birthday and their cheap laundry soap, and his shampoo.

Bill lays himself out on Ted’s bed and with grabbing desperate hands pulls Ted down with him, on top of him. The bedroom lamp is on, and it’s lighting up the head of Ted’s bed in what should be a most unflattering light but Ted is looking at him with dark blown eyes. The bed is unmade, naturally, but the blankets dig into his back as Ted presses him down into the bed.

It was thrilling, the feel of Ted’s hands on his skin like this, large heavy guitar callused hands, fingers, pressing into his skin digging in like he couldn’t believe this was happening either.

He wrapped his hands in the fancy wool jacket Ted was still wearing, it was brushing roughly against sensitive skin.

“Off.”

The only time he had ever seen two men together they had been mostly clothed but he wanted Ted bare. 

Nodding Ted sits back, Bill’s own legs resting on his thighs and Bill isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be the most triumphantly hot thing he’s ever seen or not, but it most definitely is. Ted is staring at him as he struggles with buttons and ties like taking his eyes off him might hurt him. Bill pushes himself up onto one hand and tries to help with the other. He isn’t helping much and ends up sitting in Ted’s lap.

He can feel him, he’s nervous because it feels big, which like good job Ted? But still, that’s supposed to eventually be inside him right? That’s what was going to happen right? He didn’t know exactly how it worked and wished he had more to go on then the half-seen sex from last night. 

Ted’s mouth crashes against his again as his shirt and jacket fall to the bed and it’s just as monumental as before, buzzing, electric, wet, hot. Ted is pushing him back onto the bed with mouth and hands until Ted is laying over top of him, Bill’s legs bent on either side of his best friend. He doesn’t know how this works, but it’s working. He ran a hand across Ted’s skin his own callused fingers catching on his skin, little moans pouring into his open mouth.

Ted’s hands were moving down his sides, fingers wrapping in around his waistband, digging into skin he hadn’t realized could be sensitive, squirming beneath him only made Ted more enthusiastic. Huffing puffing breath against his collarbone, wet lips, “I’m gunna-” Ted mouths into his skin and he doesn’t know what he’s gunna but he nods his agreement.

Pants, it’s his pants, Ted is pulling those stupid tight things down his legs, up over his knees and Bill can’t stop staring at Ted’s face waiting for some sort of negative reaction, his dick is gunna be out any second and it feels like the moment of truth, the point of no return. He’s bent almost in half by Ted’s chest and his fingers are searing along his skin, chest tight, heart frozen, waiting.

The second it’s out Ted freezes fingers wrapped in the fabric of his pants, the pair of them bent and wrapped around each other, it feels heavy, wet and his pulse is nowhere else just that speeding drum beat.

“I can taste you on my lips, and smell you in my clothes,” Ted whispers in that deep low rumble he wants to hear more and more often. It’s a lyric he knows that but he can’t place it. It doesn’t matter because that’s what he wants forever now, to just always taste Ted on his lips and smell him in his clothes. One of Ted’s hands leaves his leg and it’s slow to move, inching closer and closer until he can feel the heat of his hand on his dick before his fingers reach him, they are careful, lightly moving up him and he just fucking falls apart it’s so good. 

He’s not sure what he’s saying, a hand twisted up in Ted’s hair, the other laying flat against his headboard but he feels like he’s babbling. He’s never had anyone else touch him before and it wasn’t like he didn’t get it but if he had known how absolutely triumphant it would feel he might have tried harder to get laid. He wished he knew what he was saying because Ted likes it but his brain is short-circuiting. He just knows that he must be calling Ted’s name because he leans over his hand still moving between them and starts mouthing at his ear and neck again. He’s going to look totally wrecked at the end of this.

“Bill- Bill- how do I?” He asks and Bill has no idea what he could mean, he’s doing a perfectly excellent job already, but then Ted’s fingers, blunt and hot and dry are against him, pushing lightly as if he needed to knock first to get inside and it’s sending a beautiful wave of feeling over him so similar to the other night.

“Wet.” Bill manages to get out between moans, “They need to be wet, your fingers.”

“Oh!” Ted pulls his hands away from him entirely and it feels like Bill’s entire world has been ripped from under him, but Ted lands a little too heavily on his body again, hands up and digging under Bill’s head. He comes back out with a half-empty tube of lube, “This is most fortuitous.” He smiles brightly and Bill can’t believe there was ever a time where he didn’t realize that feeling in his chest at the sight of it was love. The cap is loud and the squishing squelch of a noise it makes, makes them both cringe but to try and make up for it Bill reaches down between them to touch Ted. He’s still wearing his pants, pulled even tighter over his hard-on. Ted seems to shake all over at his touch a groan dropping from his beautiful open mouth. He tries to feel out the shape of him the shape he’d figured out over many nights when he was supposed to asleep in the bed only a few feet away from where they are now. His pants are wet and it’s so hot, everything about this is just the hottest thing he’s ever seen, touched, tasted, it’s absolutely unfair.

Ted’s fingers are ice cold and dripping wet when they return to his skin.

“Stop staring dude.” He manages in a gasp when he looks up to find Ted staring at where his own fingers are pressing against. His eyes wide and dark and his whole body is hyper-focused on that one spot and Bill has never felt so embarrassed in his life.

“Can’t dude, don’t want to miss it.”

“Miss wh-” Ted’s finger finally breeches him and knocks the air out of his lungs. He arches and presses back, down, against Ted wanting more of that strange wonderful feeling he had felt last night. He’s moaning but he can’t hear it when Ted is moaning too. Ted must have seen more than he admitted because he’s already moving his finger slowly in and out and it is most excellent, “Yeah that’s it, doing so well-” He mumbles as the feeling of fullness, something he didn’t know could feel so good, ebbs and flows through him. Ted doubles over him, mouthing at his battered neck once more, moaning and swearing quietly against his skin, “Twist your finger a bit… move it around there’s-” Ted is obeying him almost slavishly pressing against him his hand trapped between himself and Bill’s body, he finds whatever it is inside of him that makes him feel so so good and he grabs needy at Ted, pulling him closer, it’s so good and feels so strange but he wants so much more he wants this all the time, “Good, so good.” He whimpers into Ted’s ear because he seems to like hearing it and also because it’s true.

Ted is a mess above and inside him and that thought threatens to short his brain out completely, Ted is doing a lot of the work but it’s so so nice, the press of his fingers, the slide of one of them, the knocking of his wrist and friendship bracelet against his skin is maddening and he finds his teeth pressing, biting into the slope of Ted’s neck, mouthing there in the way he seemed to like. They are close, Ted’s chest against his own, sweat-damp and hot, moving up and down with the movement of his finger. 

He’s squirming again, he can’t help it, there is something else building, something that’s left wanting even though this is most most excellent. But he can’t be thinking of Ted’s totally too big dick, it is, as advertised, way too big to fit in a place that fills so fulled by a single finger. There must be some other step that Kenneth and the left tenant did that got them from here to boning.

Ted must be a mind reader or something because he’s shifting on top of Bill and-

“Fuck.” The word comes out of him in a breath.

Ted has two fingers in him now. Thrusting and doing some weird stretching thing.

“Potty mouth.” Ted grumbles mouth in his hair, lips wet and brushing across his ear, “Is this alright?”

“It is most assuredly alright, it is most excellent. Brilliant work Ted.” 

Ted’s next thrust, fingers and body against him is rougher and losing its steady rhythm. His head was filled with the sound of guitars, that slow build-up, that intricate pick work. His body was filled with music and it wasn’t that song that would bring unity to the world, or anything new, or anything like that, it was fucking Crazy on You, Ted thought of Bill in music and it was Crazy on You and it was all he ever wanted to be now.

His fingers dug into Ted’s soft hot skin, tangled in his thick dark hair, his knees dug into Ted’s sides, damn it, he was still wearing his pants, Ted hadn’t bothered to pull them all the way off, they were just stretched across him, like some obscene hammock, but it didn’t really matter, not when Ted raised his head to look at him like that. Like he also heard music even though their apartment was dead quiet save for their breathing and the slick sounds of fingers and lube and skin and sweat.

There’s a burn and a stretch but it makes him gasp and moan into Ted’s skin blabbering about how good and perfect Ted was. He felt perfect and that building building heat and coiling thing in his body was twisting tight until with a shout Bill hits that peak and crashes over it, holding tight to his best friend as all the bones in his body are replaced with pudding. Ted is swearing short sharp words but he feels so swimmy that he can’t say anything about it. He feels most triumphant indeed, his entire body just riding on a lingering slowly disappearing outro.

Things start making sense again slowly in stages, his pants have been pulled all the way off finally, his stomach is wet, Ted’s hair is ticking his chest, the wet blunt feeling of his fingers against him bigger, thicker now…

The breach snaps him back all at once, it burns and a shout bursts from his throat and his hands reach out to claw at Ted’s arms. Ted is instantly frozen, head whipping up, hair flying back, to stare wide-eyed at him, his face is flushed, brown eyes black, lips dark red from biting. Bill moves his hands down slowly across Ted’s body, pants shoved down bunched around his thighs, his dick hard and hot and throbbing as his hand slides slowly down until he hits his own body. Ted is moaning at the touch but doesn’t move, Bill knows without asking that he won’t move until Bill tells him it’s okay.

His heart is pounding hard in his chest as his fingers touch the place where they are joined, he can feel himself twitch but he’s spent. But this is what he wants, what he was really thinking about last night, the fantasy hadn’t stopped at Ted’s thick fingers, it had extended to this. He nods his head but Ted doesn’t move.

“Please Ted.”

Ted keeps looking at him as he starts moving again, moving in, sinking, he’s slow about it, watching and then finally he can feel Ted’s hips against him, the idea that he had felt full by his fingers flies far far away because this is what full is, it’s heavy and strange and burns a little but also kinda nice. Ted looks like he’s going to lose it in the best way, mouth open, eyes closed, fingers digging into his skin. He shifts his hips and Ted lets out the most lovely sound, so he does it again and again until the moan comes out of his mouth. There. That’s nice. That’s really really nice.

Ted starts moving and it matches up with his own movements until it’s a strange melody, soft moans, wet slick noises, the slap of skin against skin and that feels so good too.

He’s talking again, the words are falling from his mouth without stopping by his brain first but it must be nice because Ted loves it, sounds like he does when he’s touching himself, like the swell of a great guitar riff. The rhythm falters and Ted’s grabbing fist fulls of his hair pulling a little too much as he lets out this righteous moan and turns himself into pudding as well.

It’s uncomfortable under him like this now, he’s heavy and he’s wet in a super unsexy way he wasn’t expecting but Ted’s eyelashes flutter and his kisses are soft and gentle across his skin as they roll to the side, flopping out and he has to touch himself to check, the wetness that is on his fingers when he brings them back up to his face is white, not red, thank god.

“Dude. You came inside.” He’s not sure how he feels about that exactly, it feels weird, not bad, not great.

“Not like you’re gunna get pregnant.” Ted laughs lightly but wraps his arms around Bill. Keeping him tight to his chest.

“Fine but next time-”

“There’s a next time?”

“Duh dude… unless… unless you-”

“No, I totally do, that was totally excellent.”

They both nod as if they have created some sort of unspoken law now, there will be more sex, they just need to figure out the science of it a little more. Maybe there were other things they could do that would make them feel like this, and for sure sixty-nine would need to be discussed. Even if they didn’t figure it out soon the kissing was most excellent, made him feel perfect and powerful, and lost and found and safe and dangerous. 

It was most deserving of a song. 

It wasn’t going to be THE SONG, but all the feelings swirling around in him when Ted touched him needed to be on paper, set to music, immortalized.

They take their time cleaning up, wiping lazily with dirty sheets, put on a record and fall back into bed, Bill’s this time, it isn’t as dirty, well it doesn’t have a lube puddle at least. They settle wrapped around each other. Ted is holding Bill’s hand, holding it out in front of them, running his fingers along his own, tracing calluses before pressing a kiss to his fingers.

“I guess we finally lost our virginities,” Ted speaks into his fingers and Bill lets out a huff of laughter.

“Dude, If I knew that that was an option, we would have lost them ages ago.”

Ted wraps his arms more tightly around him and Bill has to shift in his grip to get comfortable again. There really isn’t space in his twin bed for the both of them but they are too needy to separate now, maybe ever again, the bedsheets smell like Ted.

“I taste you on my lips-” He starts as Ted leans over him to turn the light off.

“And smell you in my clothes.” Ted finishes with a bright smile before leaning in to kiss him goodnight. It’s soft and sweet and tired but should most definitely become a habit, “Goodnight Bill.”

“Good night my most excellent love.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This last chapter was hard to write, please let me know if you liked it by leaving a comment and if you want to talk Bill and Ted please come yell at me on Tumblr: https://biffbang.tumblr.com/


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